Intricate Processes of Fantastic Horror

In the novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham, one of the characters, Gordon Zellaby, says:

“I wonder if a sillier and more ignorant catachresis than “Mother Nature” was ever perpetuated? It  is because nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilization. One thinks of wild animals as savage but the fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror.” 

Using that as a springboard, Kij Johnson has penned a page of unsettling ruminations: Mantis Wives.

Eerie, disturbing, and practically factual descriptions of the sex lives of the Mantis.